"One of Microsoft's hottest new profit centers is a smartphone platform you've definitely heard of: Android. Google's Linux-based mobile operating system is a favorite target for Microsoft's patent attorneys, who are suing numerous Android vendors and just today announced that another manufacturer has agreed to write checks to Microsoft every time it ships an Android device. Microsoft's latest target is Wistron Corp., which has signed a patent agreement 'that provides broad coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for Wistron's tablets, mobile phones, e-readers and other consumer devices running the Android or Chrome platform', Microsoft announced." That's the reality we live in, folks. This is at least as criminal - if not more so - than Microsoft's monopoly abuse late last century. After the Nortel crap, it's completely left the black helicopter camp for me: Microsoft, Apple, and several others are working together to fight Android the only way they know how: with underhand mafia tactics. Absolutely sickening. Hey Anonymous, are you listening? YES I WENT THERE.

Except it was Thom's claim that software patents were not granted until 1998 that was BS. And I pointed out multiple examples that prove his statement was wrong.

FYI: EPC has explicitly excluded software from being patented as of 1973.

That's not entirely true. Computer programs as a whole are not patentable. But software patents, although harder to get under the EPC, are in fact, sometimes allowed.

Also, it should be noted that the EPC has no legal enforcement authority. And the EPC interpretation and enforcement is basically left up to individual countries that are involved in it.

Something your side is battling to overturn to this very day. How's life on the side of Lodsys these days?

Cute. And again, an example of how those who are opposed to software patents see everything in black and white. Just because I don't think software patents should be completely done away with does not mean I think there aren't stupid software patents out there that should be invalid, or that there aren't abuses of the patent system. But that's not unique to software. Many things have been patented, both hardware and software, that fail to pass the "non-trivial and non-obvious" test.

It's still not software patents. EPO does sometimes grant overly wide patents, where
But it only shows what happens when you have a powerful organisation to get funds via the number of operations they make.

And in reality, courts of participating countries have applied the wording of the EPC software patentability rule based on local laws and freedoms judges get(common vs civil legal systems). I know quite a few cases where judges were strict and UK/IE judges were lax. But then again, EPC was designed to be a convention to share patents, not enforcement rules.